Use of the Internet and the World Wide Web continues to grow at a rapid pace. This growth is due, in part, to an increase in availability of data networks that may be used to access the Internet and the World Wide Web by computing device users. For instance, in addition to using conventional wired networks, computing device users may access the Internet and the World Wide Web through Wi-Fi hotspots and various types of wireless data networks, among a number of other possible approaches. These data access networks (e.g., for accessing the Internet and World Wide Web) continue to become more readily available and provide ever increasing data bandwidth capabilities. The variety of user computing devices that users may employ to connect with such data access networks continues to increase as well. Such devices may include personal computers, laptops computers and mobile computing devices (such as cellular phones, smartphones and tablet computers), as well as a number of other devices.
The increase in availability of data network access networks, the corresponding increase in the capabilities of those networks and the increased variety of user computing devices have, at least in part, allowed for changes in how users interact with their computing devices. One such change is the advent of the web-based applications as compared to native applications, where all of the content and functionality of an application is located on the user's computing device.
Generally, a web-based application is an application that is run within a Web browser on a computing device. Such web-based applications include both a client-side component (on the user device) and a server-side component (e.g., on a website corresponding with the web-based application).
Depending on the particular application, the client-side component may include only a brief description of the application, with the functionality of the web-based application being controlled by the server-side component, such as using code that is executable by a web browser, such as HTML, HTML5 and/or JavaScript, among a number of other alternatives.
For other web-based applications, the client-side component may include a description of the application, as well as code that is executable by a web browser of the computing device to provide functionality for the web-based application. In such an approach, the server-side component may be used to provide content (e.g., photos, videos, text, and audio) that is used by the web-based application (e.g., accessed by the client-side component). In such approaches, the functionality of the client-side component may be implemented in browser executable code, such as the examples provided above
Current approaches for implementing web-based applications, however, limit the flexibility that developers of such applications have in associating server-side content with the client-side component of web-based applications. This lack of flexibility, in turn, may limit the features and functionality that a developer may include in a web-based application.